Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith, Shaped by the Land

But if the current wave of attention has opened up new possibilities for Indigenous artists, particularly younger ones, credit is due less to the institutions than to Smith and others of her generation for the tireless work they did to “break the buckskin ceiling,” in her words. The Whitney retrospective makes that clear. Although Smith’s curating and activism are represented only minimally, her paintings, prints and sculptures demonstrate how she took various modern and postmodern artistic languages, including collage, appropriation and Pop Art, and made them her own — or, as she would say, made them Native.

Take, for example, “Trade (Gifts for Trading Land With White People),” which, according to the Choctaw-Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, “offers so much allowance and freedom for Native artists.” Gibson spoke of the challenges he has felt in trying to be a Native artist, activist, educator and parent simultaneously. “You need a unified model of how someone can be the same person in all those spaces,” he said. “Jaune has provided that for me.”

Smith has always occupied multiple roles. She and her sister were raised by their father, Arthur, after their mother, who gave birth to Smith as a teenager, left. Arthur was a horse trader, and while attending school, Smith worked with him — and in canneries and on farms — throughout her childhood. One of her favorite escapes was to hide in a tree and read books.

Smith didn’t get an advanced art degree until she was 40. In high school, a white adviser told her, “Indians don’t go to college,” so she did college prep. When an art teacher told her she drew better than the men, but that “women cannot be artists,” she got an art education degree. Along the way, she met her partner, Andy Ambrose, had children, and worked a variety of jobs to help support them. (Her son Neal Ambrose-Smith is also an artist; two of their collaborations are on view at the Whitney.)